


It Takes All Kinds

by JacquelineHyde



Series: Fire Emblem! Retail! [2]
Category: Fire Emblem Heroes
Genre: In which Alfonse is a favourite target for teasing, M/M, More Grocery Store AU, and Hana and Effie are the Scary Cut Fruit Girls, and Sharena will tell her life story to complete strangers, and anna is a master of disguise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-08-03 05:19:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16319891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JacquelineHyde/pseuds/JacquelineHyde
Summary: Thirty-three seconds into his new job, Zacharias begins to suspect that his co-workers are a bunch of weirdos. Three hours and thirty-three seconds into his new job, he knows for sure.Six days, three hours, and thirty-three seconds into his new job, it becomes clear that he's right there with them.





	It Takes All Kinds

It doesn't take long into his first shift for Zacharias to suspect that his entire place of work is staffed by weirdos.

Not that he didn't expect it – he's worked enough jobs, had enough first days of work, to learn that there are almost always a few quirks and oddities to be found among a new group of co-workers – but he would have thought that these people would at least _pretend_ to be blandly professional for more than thirty-three seconds.

But, as he goes to pin his nametag to the front of his awful striped green apron, he stops short with a frown.

“Uh, Alfonse,” he calls delicately to his manager-who-is-totally-not-a-manager-shut-up-guys. “Did you take a look at this?”

Glancing briefly up from the order guide ( _sorry, Zacharias, we'll get you started in a few minutes, I just need to get this order in before 8:30, and I don't want Sam training you because he's...well, you'll see_ ), Alfonse flashes him an absent smile.

“Looks good.”

Hiding a smile of his own, Zacharias waits for the inevitable double-take, and is not disappointed. About ten seconds later, Alfonse bolts from behind the produce desk, somehow managing to go pale and bright red at the same time, and grabs the offending object so forcefully that he nearly puts the pin through his own hand.

“KIRAN!” he bellows, storming out of the perishables office and two doors down, angrily waving a nametag reading _Hot Banana Guy, Produce Department_.

Amid the shouting and the placating murmurs that follow, Zacharias shakes his head with a soft laugh. Maybe he should be a little more upset about a stupid nickname that will doubtlessly follow him for his entire time working here, but honestly, Alfonse seems upset enough for both of them. Plus, some of his initial nicknames for Alfonse, back before he'd managed to peek at his nametag, had been pretty dumb: Pretty-Eyes the Produce Guy, Cute Boy in Ugly Apron, and, his personal favourite, Boy Whose Insanely Pretty Mouth You Need to Stop Thinking About, Goddammit Brain, You Don't Even Know For Sure That He's Legal, Okay, Fine, Imagine Him Taking Your Pants Off With His Teeth and Enjoy Your Stay in Hell.

So, maybe that last one is less a nickname than a stream of consciousness, but he's still curious about the exact shade of red Alfonse might turn if he ever found out about it.

“Morning, Zacharias,” Anna greets, poking her head in the door. She frowns. “Where's Alfonse? Please tell me he's not training you by giving you his stupid cheat-sheet to read in the office instead of letting you actually do anything.”

“Uh, no,” he replies quickly. “He said we'll start training after he sends the order. Then I think he went to murder someone named Kiran?”

“Ugh, again?” Anna sighs. “Okay, well, I guess I have to go rescue my admin department from certain short blue-haired death.”

 

* * *

 

About halfway through the day, Zacharias meets Sharena properly, in the lunch room while Alfonse is downstairs buying something wildly unhealthy for the three of them to share (as it is, apparently, _his turn_ , and Sharena will, apparently, beat him soundly with a baguette if he brings back anything involving vegetables).

About halfway through the day plus five minutes, he learns that Sharena is one of those people who prefers to answer questions with long, rambling stories instead of answers, along with a few...interesting things about his diligent, unassuming little not-manager.

“...and that's how we got kicked out of three karaoke bars and a casino on Alfonse's last birthday,” Sharena concludes cheerfully. “That entire night is why we don't give him absinthe anymore, especially when he's going to be somewhere that singing is an option. I still don't know why he decided that “Symphony of Destruction” would be a really great song to strip to, or when he put the lacy things under his clothes, or why Lissa needed to keep showing everyone that she was wearing the same thing, or where Maribelle learned to wield a barstool like that. And I think I remember driving a Barbie Power Wheels jeep to McDonald's after the casino, but after that, everything is just a blur until we woke up in the treehouse the next morning wearing Lordy Lordy Guess Who's Forty hats. I just really wish _someone_ remembered how we got the jeep up there with us, or where the ducks came from.”

Zacharias, who had only asked casually how old the two of them were, nods slowly.

“Huh. Wow. And...which birthday was this?”

“Oh! His twenty-second,” Sharena replies. “Did I not say that?”

“Twenty-two,” Zacharias murmurs into his coffee, setting aside rest of this outlandish tale, Megadeth striptease and all, with a firm promise to himself that he'll find out from Alfonse later just how much of it actually happened. “Not going to Hell, then.”

Sharena peers at him strangely. “What?”

Zacharias looks up innocently. “What?”

 

* * *

 

 

On the morning of his third shift, he finally meets the co-worker that all his other co-workers have tried to warn him about. Alfonse has mentioned the guy in passing, Dave and Tony have snickered and raged over him respectively, even Anna has commented on him.

 _I don't want Sam training you, because he's...well, you'll see,_ said Alfonse evasively on Thursday morning.

 _The only way he could be less useful is if he took all the product off the shelves, packed it back onto the truck, and then drove the truck into a lake,_ said Tony yesterday afternoon, driven into uncharacteristic talkativeness by his sheer loathing for this mysterious person.

 _I've told him where the carrots go forty-seven times,_ said Dave yesterday morning with a good-natured chuckle.

 _It's not that he doesn't try_ , said Alfonse yesterday afternoon when he hesitantly told Zacharias that he would meet Sam the following day.

 _Yes, it is_ , said Anna bluntly, very shortly after that.

With such a reputation to live up (or down) to, Zacharias goes into his third shift, one that will be almost entirely spent working with Sam, certain that he knows what to expect. Probably the guy is a little sloppy, a little careless, likes to work at a leisurely pace, not great with customers, and with no real regard for his co-workers. All in all, nothing that he hasn't dealt with before. He can deal with it again.

It doesn't take long to realize that Sam is no ordinary idiot.

By midmorning, Zacharias has come to comprehend the full epic scope of Sam's uselessness. The words of his co-workers did little to fully prepare him, for _no_ words possibly could have. Like trying to explain a sunrise to someone with no concept of the sun, or the sky, or even three-dimensional space, any description would have inevitably fallen so short as to be completely meaningless.

Not that he minds giving the guy instructions, even if he has to wonder why The New Guy is effectively supervising his co-worker whose seniority far outweighs his. Alfonse left him with a fairly detailed list of notes on how the opening shift usually goes, along with his phone number should anything go wrong, and several reassurances not to worry if he can't get everything done, happy-face happy-face happy-face, so passing them along to Sam when he starts his shift by wandering around the back room and asking what he should be doing is no particular hardship. Neither, particularly, is putting together a cart of things that need to go on the sales floor when he comes back from doing the morning cull to find that Sam hasn't so much as moved because _I don't know what needs filling_.

When Sam returns from the floor after twenty minutes, claiming that everything on his cart is filled, Zacharias notices on his next trip out that “filled” apparently means “three pieces of broccoli dumped haphazardly into a space meant for three cases.” Annoying, definitely, but still not that far beyond what he's seen in the past.

When Sam returns from the floor after _another_ twenty minutes, claiming that _now_ the broccoli is filled, Zacharias doesn't even bother getting his hopes up. A good thing, as there are now _four_ pieces of broccoli dumped haphazardly in a space meant for three cases. But hey, at least it's progress. Maybe by lunchtime tomorrow, the broccoli will be entirely filled, as long as no one buys broccoli between now and then.

When he comes back from a trip around the store with one of the nice old ladies he made friends with during his months shopping here (Phyllis was _delighted_ to find out that the nice boy who always fetches her half-and-half from the top shelf is working here now), he finds Sam seated comfortably on a hi-boy, fully absorbed by whatever is going on with his phone.

“Hey, there's still a lot of work to do,” he finally says pointedly, after a long moment to breathe through the urge to say something that could get him fired.

“In a minute; I have to finish this, and then I'm going on break,” Sam mumbles absently, and Zacharias takes a moment to breathe through the urge to say something that could get him _arrested_.

He's under no delusion that three shifts (and an embarrassing amount of time watching Alfonse and trying to decide if striking up a personal conversation would be sketchy when Alfonse was at work and unable to leave if he got uncomfortable) have made him an expert in all the nuances of exactly what this job entails.

But.

He is pretty confident that sitting around, playing Candy Crystal Farming Bubble Blaster Fashion Restaurant Saga was _not_ mentioned in the online job posting.

(He's heard enough of those sounds from Veronica's phone to recognize them instantly. His sister's obsession was intense, but mercifully short. He doesn't know if he could have handled more than three days of that godawful jangly music, or those jarring sound effects.)

“How in the hell did you manage to train him without murdering him and tossing his bloodied corpse in the cardboard baler?” he demands when Alfonse comes in later that day.

Alfonse looks at him strangely.

“Who, Sam? Zach, he's worked here for almost six years; _he_ trained _me_ when I started.”

He stares in baffled horror as this sinks in.

“Seriously? That idiot trained you? How are you even remotely competent?”

“Oh, Jill retrained me when Anna took over the store and hired her,” Alfonse laughs. “She tried to retrain him too, but it didn't take.”

“What in the hell made Anna _keep_ him?”

Alfonse fixes him with an incredulous eye.

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to fire someone past their probation? Plus, even if he's useless, he shows up, and I guess that's good enough for Anna, since she has other people to do the actual work.”

Again, it takes a moment for this insane excuse for logic to sink in.

“That is...quite possibly the stupidest thing I've ever heard.”

“That's manager logic,” Alfonse shrugs. “But hey, Sam's training wasn't a total bust – you should have seen my Candy Crystal Farming Bubble Blaster Fashion Restaurant Saga scores!”

 

* * *

 

 

On the afternoon of his third shift, he has a run-in with a co-worker that leaves him equal parts baffled and angry, at least until he finds out a little more about her.

As he's passing the garbage chute, he notices one of the Fresh Cut girls – Hana, he thinks Alfonse said – trying to hoist an entire shopping cart heaped full of inedible watermelon up three feet to the door of the chute.

Once, twice, she tries to lift the end of the cart to catch on the edge of the door, and both times loses her grip on the slippery, sticky metal and its few hundred pounds of unusable fruit.

“Hey, do you need some help with that?” he calls, desperately afraid that he's going to witness a serious injury.

The little brunette turns with a bright smile.

“No thanks,” she replies cheerfully, a little strained with another attempt to lift the cart. “I've got it.”

He winces as the cart slips out of her grip and lands with a crash, barely missing her foot, little bits of squishy watermelon flying in all directions.

“Are you sure?”

Instantly, Hana's sunny smile vanishes.

“Why wouldn't I be sure?” she demands heatedly. “Because I'm a _girl_ , and _girls_ can't _possibly_ be capable of lifting anything heavier than their own purses?”

“What? No!” he protests, taking a hasty step back, because he's _seen_ what those Fresh Cut girls can do with a handful of paring knives, and he doesn't _think_ they're in the habit of carrying sharp objects in their aprons at all times, but better safe than reduced to a neatly cubed pile. “Because there's probably four hundred pounds of watermelon in there, never mind the weight of the cart itself. I don't know of anyone who should be lifting that alone.”

“Oh, wow” she gasps with sarcasm thick enough to spackle a wall. “It sure is lucky that you came by to save me from my stupid woman-brain thinking I can do things, before I broke a nail or had a fainting spell or something! I guess I better fall to my knees in overwhelming gratitude, and hey, while I'm down here _anyway_...”

Later, Zacharias will find out from Sharena (since Alfonse flatly refuses to talk about it without Hana's permission) that Hana's reaction toward a simple offer of help is born not from a generally unpleasant personality, but from past experience with some scumbag that Anna thankfully got rid of as soon as she took over the store. Todd, the produce manager before Jill, saw no particular reason that every pretty girl working for him shouldn't be regarded as up for grabs. Specifically, he seemed to honestly believe that small acts of chivalry could be stored up and exchanged for sexual favours whenever he saw fit, causing most of the female staff to leave once it became clear that the store manager at the time either didn't believe them, or thought that they should take his advances as a compliment, depending on the girl and the store manager's personal opinion of her appearance.

Hana, being as stubborn in this as she apparently is in everything, had refused to leave a job that she liked, just because some jerkface man was being gross. When Hana finally got it through his mile-thick skull that she would _not_ be succumbing to his charms, sleeping with him out of gratitude, or putting any part of him anywhere near her mouth for any reason, he'd dropped any trace of the charm that he seemed to imagine he possessed, and become the manager from every employee's darkest nightmares: demanding to the point of absurdity, petty, mean-spirited, nitpicky, and ready to hand out disciplinary action for the smallest infractions.

But, as Zacharias currently knows none of this, his temper flares immediately to life, momentary fear of ending up in the meat department service case as mystery skewers forgotten.

“That's one hell of an assumption to make!” he snaps. “Believe it or not, I do occasionally help people without expecting something in return. I call it _having a job_. Or, when I'm off the clock, _being a decent human being_.”

“Oh, please! The only other person I've seen you help lift heavy things is Alfonse, and everyone knows you two are already banging in the produce cooler during slow hours. You've been coming in here every day for like four months to talk to a pretty guy about _bananas_. I know how boys flirt, okay?”

“What an awful thing to say! Do you know how many Food Safety guidelines that would break? Besides, I help whoever I'm working with, even if you're not around to see it.”

“What about Sam? You worked with Sam yesterday, and I didn't see you helping _him_ lift heavy things!”

“Oh, come on, Sam doesn't lift heavy things! That's too much like work.”

“Okay, fair point,” Hana concedes grudgingly. “But I'm still not some sweet, delicate, fragile flower who needs to be coddled and protected!”

Zacharias pauses to consider his words.

“I...don't think anyone could possibly mistake you for one,” he finally manages, in what he considers to be an impressive display of tact.

Hana nods in cool satisfaction and returns to her cart, this time opting to throw the melon halves down the chute one by one.

“Then we understand each other. Oh, hey Effie!”

“Hey, Hana,” another one of the Fresh Cut girls, a sturdy, pale-haired young woman, greets. “You need some help with that?”

“Sure, that would be great!” Hana chirps. She takes a firm hold on the left side of the cart. “Okay, on three. One...tw—ACK!”

Zacharias watches in wonder as Effie sets down the five flats of strawberries in her arms and hoists the cart up to the chute and empties it in what looks like a single effortless motion, a rather alarmed Hana clinging tightly to the side lest she go hurtling after the melons.

Apparently, he thinks, making a note to get some work-out tips from Effie sometime in the near future, there's a _reason_ that all of the Produce guys go out of their way to stay on the good side of Fresh Cut.

 

* * *

 

Over the days that follow, Zacharias discovers many, many more strange quirks about his co-workers.

He learns that Xander the Meat Manager is bizarrely protective of the meat department's label maker, and will absolutely take an hour out of his workday to hunt it down if the poor soul who borrowed it doesn't return it in a timely enough manner.

He learns why the job of weighing and scanning out the often rotten discards is universally reviled within the department. Incidentally, this is also when he learns that Alfonse makes the cutest horrified squawk when you flick cantaloupe innards at him.

(Look, if he didn't want slimy orange goo in his hair, he shouldn't have forgotten to provide plastic gloves, and then laughed when Zacharias put his hand right through the rind of a thoroughly rotted melon.)

He learns that Elise the Bakery Clerk periodically steals and hides the meat department's label maker, while Lissa the Deli Clerk cheerfully sets Xander on the warpath by commenting that she's pretty sure she saw this or that person using a label maker with bloodstains on it.

He learns that they have some truly bizarre ways of referring to things around here, when Alfonse casually asks for help _filling his holes_ , only to go bright red seconds later and sputter that oh god no, not _that_ kind of holes, holes on the _shelf_ , they're out of carrots and some of the salad dressings on the sales floor, and they need to get them filled before Anna notices.

(Zacharias is pretty sure that his own expression of shock at what seemed like an uncharacteristically bold sexual advance from a boy who spent their first meeting bright red and making overwhelmed squeaking noises must have been pretty ridiculous, if Sharena's many, many, _many_ pearl-clutching jokes are any indication.)

He learns that Sumia the Floral Lady likes to sing and talk to her flowers, oblivious or uncaring of the weird looks she gets from customers, and has been known to cry in the bathroom following the sale of a plant that she's really bonded with.

And then there's Henry, and damned if that guy isn't just a strangely likable laundry list of oddities all on his own.

But it isn't until about a week after his first shift that the ridiculousness of this place bursts into full, glorious bloom.

It's Wednesday evening, and he's gearing up to start his first unsupervised closing shift, while Alfonse is gearing up to spend the next five hours fretting and worrying that it's too soon to leave The New Guy alone to close, and what if the coolers all go down, or the order doesn't come in, or that crazy lady calls and asks for ten containers, each with exactly five thousand blueberries?

“In the event of the first two, I notify the manager on duty, and in the event of the third, I look around until I find Lissa, Sharena, and Elise snickering into a cellphone somewhere nearby, and tell them to knock off the pranks,” Zacharias replies promptly. “Don't worry so much. You took me through this on Monday night, and you left me twelve pages of instructions. And if anything goes _really_ wrong, I'll call.”

“I don't know, maybe I should stick around. It's only five hours – I'll just read in the coffee bar.”

Firmly, he takes his friend by the shoulders and points him towards the front doors.

“Go _home,_ Alfonse,” he orders sternly with a gentle shove.

“Okay, fine,” Alfonse huffs. “See you tomorrow.”

On the way back to the receiving bay, something short, green, and leafy catches his eye, and he stops short when further inspection reveals it to be a shrub, plonked randomly in the middle of the meat department.

“What in the everliving name of _fu--_ ”

“Hey, before I go, I just wanted to remind you to rotate the--”

“Alfonse,” he interrupts in a hushed voice, eyes trained on the bizarre spectacle. “Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing?”

“Oh, the shrub sneaking around the meat department?” Alfonse asks with a disinterested glance. “Yeah, that's just Anna.”

“O...kay, and _why_ is she dressed as a shrub?"

“Well, there's been a recurring shoplifter in the meat department at night, after Xander goes home or upstairs to do his closing manager-on-duty stuff. The evening meat guy always promises that he'll keep an eye out this time, but he usually ends up actively avoiding customers instead.”

Zacharias considers this explanation for a long moment.

“That explains absolutely nothing.”

“She says she can't see clearly enough on the security cameras, and by the time she gets downstairs, the guy is gone, so she needs to get closer. Her picture is right in the front lobby, so even if she does it in people-clothes instead of her uniform, he would probably recognize her, so she needs a disguise.”

“Yeah, but--”

Any further discussion is cut off by a flurry of movement and a familiar voice barking out an order.

“Sir, please take the stolen merchandise out of your pants!”

“Honestly, I don't think I'd ask for that back,” Alfonse notes with a grimace as they take off across the store, closer to where a shrub atop the lower half of a human female is now menacing a lanky man in a trench coat and leggings attempting to menace her back.

“How dare you!” the man exclaims, outraged. “Is this how you greet all your customers, with baseless accusations? This is completely unacceptable. I'd like to speak to your manager.”

Anna raises a green painted eyebrow.

“You're speaking to her, sir. The name's Anna. Nice to meet you. Now, return the items you've stolen, and we won't have a problem.”

“I haven't stolen anything!” the man protests, and Anna gives an impatient huff.

“Sir, there is a prime rib roast-shaped bulge in your pants right now.”

The accused, in a swift and bafflingly inappropriate change of tactics, leers at the foliage-clad store manager.

“Oh, I think you know what _that_ is, sweetheart.”

The look she fixes him with is far from impressed.

“Yes; it's a stolen prime rib roast. I can see price tag through your tights. Now, give it back, and please leave my store.”

The man puffs himself up and moves closer to Anna, looming in a way that is presumably supposed to be intimidating, but as Alfonse clears his throat pointedly, his eyes land on the two men watching from a scant five feet away, and without a moment's hesitation, he bolts.

“Seriously?” Anna growls, wheeling to glare at her assembled produce staff. “Well, don't just stand there, head him off at the door!”

“I'm not sure we get paid enough for this,” Alfonse points out, nevertheless sprinting obediently towards the front door.

After making careful note of the man's position, Zacharias takes a slightly different route than Alfonse or Anna, attempting to cover as much ground and cut off as many escape routes as possible. He gets to the deli counter just in time to see the shoplifter body-checking Alfonse into a nearby display of shredded Parmigiano Reggiano. Torn between helping Alfonse out of the resulting mess and continuing the pursuit, Zacharias finds his decision made for him when Anna crouches and leaps, sailing majestically through the air, leaves rustling in the breeze, and knocks the shoplifter to the ground, sitting across his torso to keep him in place.

“Zacharias! Get the prime rib out of his pants!”

“Now, I _know_ we don't get paid enough for _that_ ,” Alfonse announces absently, pulling out his phone to snap a picture of the blanket of heartbreakingly expensive cheese drifting down upon the scene like fragrant snow. In the background, the deli manager weeps in despair at the disastrous hit to his weekly shrink percentage.

“Good thinking, Alfonse!” Anna calls, leaning more heavily on the shoplifter as he tries to wriggle away from Zacharias's attempts to remove the roast from his leggings without accidentally touching him in any way. “Get a picture of him for the Wall of Shame!”

Alfonse looks up from his phone in surprise.

“Oh! Sure, just give me a second. I want to text Sharena a picture of Parmageddon. She's going to be so mad that she missed this.”

“I'm glad to see you have your priorities in orders,” Anna sighs, nevertheless adding a request that Alfonse say hi to Sharena for her.

Once both pictures are taken and sent to their various recipients, Anna climbs to her feet.

“Zacharias, if you would please escort this gentleman out of the store?”

“Uh, sure,” he agrees. Realizing he's still clutching the roast, he shoves it at Alfonse. “Could you hold this?”

“Knowing where that thing has been, I'd really rather not,” Alfonse laments, nevertheless tucking the large chunk of meat under his arm. “I'll take it back to the meat department and let the guys decide what they want to do with it. Do you think marinating it in bleach for a few days would ruin the texture?”

Biting back a laugh and _accidentally_ elbowing the man in the ribs when he wheels to snarl at Alfonse, Zacharias guides him firmly to the front door, where Anna is already waiting to explain that no, she will not be calling the police this time, but yes, he is henceforth banned from the store. And no, he likely shouldn't attempt to press charges for assault, when the security footage, despite its low quality, will so clearly show that he initiated the physical contact, and she and her employees were acting only to subdue a possible threat to the rest of the customers and staff.

“Why didn't somebody warn me that this whole place is ridiculous?” Zacharias grumbles to Alfonse once he returns from the meat department and Anna departs to wash the paint off her face and disentangle the twigs and leaves from her hair.

“Yeah, that was something else, wasn't it?” Alfonse laughs softly.

Zacharias shakes his head with a noise of disgust.

“It was the stupidest thing I've ever seen a manager do.”

Alfonse shoots him a startled look.

“Wait, what? Zach, this shoplifter has been a problem for a while now, and the security system head office puts in these stores isn't what you'd call helpful _._ Half the time, it looks like fuzzy blobs wandering around the store because the camera distorts things so badly, so the chance of getting a clear picture of someone's face is slim to none. Anna's the one who's going to get the crap from head office if she keeps losing profit to shoplifters, even if it's because the equipment they've given her to prevent it is so obviously inferior, so don't you think it makes sense that she'd try her own methods?”

“”Of course it does,” he shrugs. “Anyone would have done the same. I'm just saying, why a _shrub_? A shrub sneaking around a meat department? It doesn't make any sense. It was far too conspicuous! The whole point of a disguise is to _blend in_. There were a lot of things she could have dressed up as that would have done it better.”

“Like...a chicken?” Alfonse suggests. “Or a rack of lamb?”

Zacharias regards his friend disapprovingly.

“Alfonse, please; take this seriously.”

“Sorry,” Alfonse says mildly.

“Why couldn't she have dressed up as a giant basket filled with that gourmet steak sauce we have all over the store? Or a rack of hamburger and hotdog buns? That's just good cross-merchandising – no one would look twice. Or, for greater mobility, she could have painted herself in the pattern of the floor, and just dropped out of sight if the thief came close to noticing that he was being followed.”

“Wow, you put a lot of thought into this in the last five minutes while we were playing Store Security.”

“Or if she really _had_ to dress up as a shrub, it should have been in a proper planter, at the very least. And it wouldn't have hurt to lay a little ground work: you know, scatter similar plants throughout the store about a week ahead of time, and wait until the customer base, including our shoplifter, got used to them and stopped paying them any attention.”

“Like, a _lot_ of thought. It's a little weird.”

“Oh, like anyone in this place has any room to talk about being _weird_ ,” Zacharias scoffs.

Alfonse grins up at him, eyes dancing with mirth, and flicks some parmesan at him.

“That's what I mean; you're one of us now!”

And despite his initial reaction of dismay that he's being assimilated into the absurdity that is this store, the more Zacharias turns the idea over in his mind, the less terrifying and the more welcome it seems.

“I guess I can live with that.”

 


End file.
